It's October. Somewhere near you a headless horseman is riding across a front lawn. The man who put him there, Washington Irving, didn't set out to write for a living. In 1815 he sailed abroad to try to save his family's import business. The business couldn't be saved. The book he finished in England sold so well that he decided to make writing his trade. Micah Mattix tells the story in the Journal's Fall Books section, reviewing Phillip Lopate's A Washington Irving Sketch Book (Princeton, 288 pages, $28.95).
Irving was America's first literary star, the reviewer writes. His spoof A History of New York came out in 1809 under the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker. It was a hit at once and went through three editions in 10 years. Lord Byron told a friend, “His writings are my delight.” Walter Scott compared him to Swift. The pen name stuck to the whole city. New Yorkers are still Knickerbockers.
He was born in New York City on April 3, 1783, into a big middle-class family, and named for George Washington. His father was a merchant and a strict church deacon. A classmate remembered a shy, slow pupil. At 19 he published comic letters in a city paper his brother edited. In 1804 he went to Europe for his health and, his family hoped, his education. He came back in 1806 and put out 20 issues of a satirical magazine before the Knickerbocker book.
The fallback that became the career
Then came 1815 and the failed rescue of the family import business. He stayed abroad 17 years. In England he finished The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., the collection that holds Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane. Both were drawn partly from Hudson Valley legends. Its success settled the question. He'd write for a living. Some readers back home thought its fond view of English country life was a betrayal, so soon after the War of 1812. He came home in 1832 anyway and wrote up a trip to the West. He never married. His fiancée, Matilda Hoffman, died at 17.
Lopate's book is an appreciation, the reviewer says, and it quotes at length. That pads a slim volume. It also puts the best of Irving in front of you directly. For the full life, fuller biographies exist. For the case that he's worth reading again, this one does the job.
Our read
This is Career, with a side of Estate, the legacy part. Two things in this story are worth a minute. First, the writing life started as the fallback. He was already famous for one book, but the family business was the plan. Writing for a living was what he did when the plan failed. Plenty of good working lives begin that way. It's worth building a plan that can survive the first plan failing. Second, look at what lasted. Four biographies, travel books, volumes of sketches, and the hit that made him famous. Almost none of it is read. Two short stories carry the name.
A legacy is rarely the part its owner expected. That's true of books, and it's true of estates. The thing your grandchildren keep may not be the thing you spent the most on. So the plan should be clear about what matters, in writing, while you're the one deciding. The umbrella gets bought on a dry day.